ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

My Archmage(who relies heavily on the Aegis tree) recently came across the Fiery Choker. Between the sweet, sweet fire damage and nifty fire healing ability, I figured it'd be a great addition to my gear. Sadly, I discovered a terrible problem! The Aegis tree gives you a shield whenever you get a direct heal(rather than a regeneration effect), which is an enormously powerful ability. I often use a healing infusion before doing anything dangerous just for the extra 200-odd hp, and generally use the more powerful Aegis healing spell mid-battle. BUT, the Fiery choker's healing trick usually gives me a tiny, 50ish hp shield(or sometimes an ludicrously small 1-2 hp shield), which would be very nice if it didn't preclude using my own, more powerful shields.

So, in short, let the player overwrite weaker shields using stronger ones, rather than locking them into weaker shields.

That shield comes from taking fire damage, don't get hit by fire damage while wearing Firey Choker and you won't have a small shield.

Thanks for the useless advice, but it doesn't exactly touch on my suggestion. If that's a "no" vote, I'd prefer you just said that over stating the obvious.

This is (was?) also an issue with Bloodcaller's Life leech and Bathe in Light. Personally, I'd rather have a warning dialogue come up than forbid it. I've lost several lives that could have been saved by replacing a 10/800 HP shield with a new 700 HP one, if it was allowed.

Another (similar) change I would want is to allow new regen effects to replace old ones. The Higher regen effect is hit hard by this as it is almost always less healing per turn than a regen infusion.

I understand what you're both asking for, but locking out infusions/runes when another version of them is being used is purposeful in that it forces players to make good decisions instead of say, spamming 2 shield runes in a row to stack them into one omfgwtf shield.

Also, could you not just use a shield rune or displacement shield instead of the Aegis heal mid-battle to avoid that problem? This seems like a problem specific to archmages whom are squishier than most but surely there are options to fall back on instead of trying to edit out an edge case issue with shields from small heal values?

No one suggested stacking. The idea is to be able to replace, so the shield or regen you had before would entirely disappear. Otherwise you end up with some very stupid situations of dancing around enemies waiting for your shield to wear off so you can start up a new shield. And it's certainly not an Archmage-only problem - undead know this trouble all too well.

I fully support the idea (and have suggested it before myself :P)

Personally I enjoy as a non-archmage stacking a shield rune/aegis shield with a displacement shield for 700+ shields.

I don't mean changing/allowing a different kind of stacking at all, just saying that is the logic as to how it works now.

I'm curious, what undead are you playing?

It'd be nice if "merge" logic could handle voluntary vs. passive events.

If you want to keep things foolproof and without warning popup, you could add an instant use shield remove ability. (preferably without failchance during confusion)
This would increase the risk for switching shields when confused, as you're left without shield for one or more turns if your add shield action fails.

I've created a list of stuff I'd like implemented before DG calls it v1.0... And I'll give him the list at a stage... But he clears a lot of it up at times.

This is one of them.